Each of these modes is separately measurable
and each is buildable. A “Full Life” has all these elements
although there are serious tensions among them. I suggest that
psychology in the coming decade will supplement its focus on healing
mental illness with a new focus on understanding and building what
makes life worth living. The Positive Workplace will focus on building
engagement and meaning at work. Positive education will teach the
skills of Positive Psychology in secondary schools, to prevent
depression and help to build life-long happiness among young
people.”

10.30 am

Morning Break

11 am

Session 2. KEYNOTE Positive Psychology: The Pursuit ofHappiness at Work, at School, and at Home (cont.)

“Happy people enjoy countless
benefits – not just feeling good, but enhanced productivity and
creativity, more fulfilling relationships, superior physical health,
and even longer life. Until recently, however, many scientists
were pessimistic about the very notion that happiness can be lastingly
increased. First, happiness is heritable and very stable over the
life course, and second, we have a remarkable capacity to adapt to any
positive changes in our lives. I have developed a model
suggesting that such pessimism is unwarranted. I will start by
showing how to measure and understand our genetic “happiness set point”
and then describe how this set point determines just 50% of happiness,
while a mere 10% can be attributed to differences in people’s
life circumstances. This leaves a surprising 40% of our capacity for
happiness within our power to change. Drawing on my research with
thousands of participants, I will describe a detailed yet
easy-to-follow program to increase health and happiness in our
day-to-day lives by introducing a dozen uniquely formulated “happiness strategies”
– that is, intentional activities, or mindful actions that we can
practice on a regular basis. In particular, I will focus on
longitudinal studies – and their implications – of the
practice of committing acts of kindness, staying optimistic when
imagining the future, and expressing gratitude in optimal ways.
Most important, I will discuss the critical factors that bolster our
likelihood of success – for example, how to find the right fit
between the happiness activities and our personalities, interests, and
goals, as well as how to understand the many obstacles to happiness and
how to overcome them. In sum, emphasizing how much of our health
and happiness is within our control, I will address the scientific
“how” of my happiness research, demystifying the many myths
that unnecessarily complicate its pursuit.”

The medical profession’s most powerful tool against
stress – the ability of positive emotions to stimulate the
parasympathetic nervous system

Why emotions are as important to the "east" as to the "west"?

Why positive emotions matter to corporations?

Positive emotions and adult development

“This session explores the
proposal that six positive emotions:1. "parental" love (attachment);2.
trust (faith); 3. Compassion;4. Forgiveness; 5. Joy; 6. hope constitute
what we mean by spirituality. Until recently these emotions have been
grossly ignored by psychology and are yet are just as important to
clinicians, family members and employers as they are to religious
organizations. The so-called negative emotions of anger, sadness, and
fear are present oriented, predominantly self-oriented and activate the
sympathetic (stress responsive) nervous system. These are the emotions
that preoccupy clinicians and occupational health therapists. In
contrast, the positive emotions (listed above) are future oriented,
prosocial and often activate the parasympathetic (soothing) nervous
system. These emotions have experimentally been demonstrated to enhance
leadership, creativity, cognition and tolerance. Translated into
psychiatric jargon, negative emotions move us toward narcissism;
positive emotions lead us away from narcissism. Until the last 20
years, however, we knew little about the positive emotions. Consider
the fact that the leading American text, The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry,
half a million lines in length, devotes 100-600 lines each to shame,
guilt, terrorism, anger, hate and sin, and, of course, devotes
thousands of lines to depression and fear/anxiety. In contrast
the textbook devotes only five lines to hope, one line to joy and not a
single line to faith, compassion, forgiveness or love. Our scientific
understanding of emotions depends on two new sciences each younger than
atomic physics, ethology and neuroscience. Human evolution has created
two brains: a "mammalian" brain that can feel, love and trust and empathize and a "Homo sapiens "neocortical”
brain that can speak, think and analyze. The session will share the new
neuro scientific findings about this emotional "mammalian" brain to the
audience more used to only conceptualizing behaviour in terms of the
"human" analytical brain.”

4.45 pm

Questions

5.00 pm

Session 5. The Scheherazade Magic: A Singaporean WriterShows The Joy And Power Of Story-Telling

Dr Catherine Lim

The life-saving power of story-telling, as proved by Scheherazade

How story-telling has contributed to my happiness both as a writer and as a person

Telling stories both to inspire, to entertain and to spread joy

The potential in EVERYONE to create their own stories for greater understanding of self and others

Some practical tips on writing a short story that will help increase your happiness - anybody can!

“I will describe how three decades
of telling stories based on my childhood experiences and my
observations of life in a society where tradition clashes with
modernity have brought me much happiness and fulfillment. I will show
that, with the help of some writing tips, others too can create simple
tales from the rich store of experiences and memories that everyone
has. Whether sad or happy, troubling or inspiring, such tales can
contribute to a person's sense of self-understanding, identity and
rootedness, the ultimate condition for true happiness.”

Dr David Chan - Professor of Psychology and Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University

National Accounts of Well-Being

Levels of Analysis in Well-Being – The Nation, the Group, and the Individual

Conceptualization and Measurement Issues in Well-Being Research

Challenges from Negativity Bias and Defensive Pessimism

Practical Intelligence and Well-Being

Positive and Negative Effects of Proactive Behaviors on Well-Being

The Fuzzy Logic of Happiness – Reconciling East and West in Singapore

Happiness and Well-Being – Management in Organizations and Policy Making in Singapore

In the United Nations reporting system,
the two major indicators taken to index a nation’s well being are
the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and the HDI (Human Development Index).
However, these “objective” well-being indicators may not be
adequate as aggregate measures of citizens’ well-being such as
their level of life satisfaction and happiness. Indeed, a major part of
an individual’s well-being is inherently subjective insofar as it
is about how the individual thinks and feels about his or her quality
of life. As subjective well-being is correlated with or predictive of
the individual’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, it is
important that public policy makers and organizational leaders have a
good grasp of the research on happiness and well-being. In this
presentation, I will first examine well-being at different levels of
analysis (the nation, the group or organization, the individual) and
discuss the complexities in the conceptualization and measurement of
well-being in scientific research. Next, I will present several
recently published studies conducted in Singapore to illustrate
important issues on well-being. Drawing on research in social and
personality psychology, I will discuss challenges to well-being posed
by negativity bias and defensive pessimism. I will then show how the
ability to judge and effectively respond to practical situations is key
to enhancing well-being. Specifically, this practical intelligence or
situational judgment effectiveness will determine whether an
individual’s proactive behaviors are adaptive or maladaptive for
well-being as well as whether an individual’s thinking style
embedded in the tension between Eastern and Western thought may help or
hurt well-being. Finally, we will discuss how the science of happiness
and well-being can provide us an evidence-based approach towards
developing better management in organizations and policy making in
Singapore

Positive psychology in secondary schools: from eliminating depression to building the skills of well- being

Whole school approach to well-being

Higher education in positive psychology: the magic of MAPP

“Positive education is about
developing the skills of flourishing and optimal functioning in
children, teenagers and students, as well as parents and educational
institutions. This presentation will review the world-wide progress and
validation of positive psychology programmes at primary and secondary
levels, including the Well-Being Curriculum and Strengths at Schools,
(both currently implemented in the UK), the Penn Resilience Programme,
run in American and British schools, and the Positive Psychology
Programme for the US secondary education system. Moreover, I will
discuss how the principles of positive psychology and well-being can be
applied to the whole school environment, drawing on the example of
Geelong Grammar School in Australia. Finally, we will consider how
bringing positive psychology into higher education can have an impact
on both students and their subsequent professional choices.”

Strategies to reduces the brain's obstructive filters that block learning

Strategies to increase the neurotransmitters that contribute to learning and long-term memory

“Raising and teaching happier,
smarter, more responsive and responsible children using mindful
learning and neuro-logical "RAD" strategies. After reviewing current
research about how information is processed by the brain to become
knowledge, I will describe the strategies for parents and teachers to
help children reduce stresses, increase mindful alertness, sustain
optimism, increase motivation, build strong long-term memories, develop
higher-level thinking, practice creative problem solving, and approach
life and learning joyfully. Mindfulness education teaches students to become more aware of their own state of mind and is a critical practice for students to use with RAD strategies to achieve their maximal potential in school and life.”

12.15 Questions

12.30 Lunch

1.30 Session 9. Positive Psychology and Culture: Pleasure,
Domains of Life, and the World of Food

“Cultures differ in what they
value most, although there is a great deal of variation among people
within any culture. Contrasting South, Southeast, and East Asian
cultures with Western developed cultures suggests greater emphasis on
collectivism, harmony and tradition in the East, and greater emphasis
on individualism, individual agency and choice in the West.
Pleasure itself can be viewed from different perspectives, including
the basic distinction between experienced, remembered and anticipated
pleasure. Positive approaches to work, leisure activities and
particularly food will be discussed. Food will be considered with
respect to the enormous changes in the food environment in the
developed world in the last 50 years, and the contrast between eating
as a pleasurable act and eating as a worrisome act. Contrasts in
attitudes to food between Americans, French, and Indians will be
considered.”

02.45 Questions

3.00 pmAfternoon Break

3.30 pm Session 10. Happiness in a Global World

Philip Merry – CEO, Global Leadership Academy, Singapore

Global Effectiveness and Happiness

Cultural Values – changes in Singapore

Mindset and happiness

How your Cultural Values make you Happy

How your Cultural Values make you Unhappy

Influence of Parental Messages

How to Unblock Negative Messages

Reframing your Mindsets to Accelerate Happiness

Flow – Attracting Happiness

“Global “connection” has had and enormous impact on
nations and organisations – not always for the better. Many of us
accept blindly our cultural values and do not often consider whether
they contribute to our happiness or block our happiness in a global
world. From over 30 years of cross cultural consulting in 48 countries
I will share in this session real stories of ways in which cultural
values have contributed to success or frustration in the lives of Asian
and Western executives and organisations. You will apply the lessons to
your own life to discover ways in which your cultural values are either
in your heart – and working for you – or a burden on your
back and working against you.